I’ve been thinking a lot about the  “embedded advertising” conversation that we had earlier this week. You guys made some good points, and they’ve really stuck with me.

No joke: On wednsday afternoon, I was walking to pick up a turkey burger from the Park Slope Diner, and I was thinking about this one part of Glee that I really liked. Then I totally stopped in my tracks, right there on the sidewalk, and realized I’d been duped. Advertising had sneaked past me, and I didn’t even notice when it was happening! Paradigm shift!

I’ll give you the specifics on that… after the jump.

Before I get to my big revelation, let me reference the comments that  helped me have it…

(1) Dan mentioned that he didn’t think Burger King had funded an Arrested Development episode that mocked Burger King. He was surprised to discover that the company had, in fact, paid to become the butt of a Tobias plotline.

(2) Linda noted that she tends to miss embedded advertising, no matter how blatant. At the time, I wished I could be like her….

until I realized that I loved an entire sequence in the pilot of Glee (reviewed here) that revolved around MySpace.

It starts with a joke: Glee club coach Will Schuester tells the principal that the school’s students are miserable… and that’s why they have MySpace pages.

Then we cut to glee club diva Rachel recording videos of herself singing shows tunes and posting them on her MySpace page. She explains that she needs to do this in order to prove that she’s talented, though the next scene shows her classmates watching her videos and mocking the ever-loving hell out of them.

Will’s joke tickled me, and I laughed in painful recognition at Rachel’s “singing on camera” debacle. Thank God there was no YouTube in 1993, or segments of “Mark: The Man, the Myth, the Legend” would probably still be getting crucified on computers the world over. (If you ever meet my parents, be sure to ask them about this video.)

But anyway… it wasn’t until I went for the aforementioned turkey burger that I realized MySpace probably paid for all those references.

Damn! How did I miss that?

It’s partly because the episode mocks MySpace and its users. If a product is shown in a less-than-flattering light, then my Sell-Out Sensors power down and I start trusting a scene’s integrity again. That’s why I can deal with the stuff on Glee and it’s why, like Madge, I can accept the cheeky brand whoring on 30 Rock. If a product is subservient to the show, and not the other way around, the I can accept its presence. That builds brand trust.

To get back to Glee, it’s also nice that when Will talks about MySpace, we don’t see a MySpace logo in the frame. That allows the product to be mentioned in the scene without taking it over. It lets the brand become a believable part of the episode’s world instead of a bossy attention hog.

Really, it’s the desperate, please-please-love-me type of product placement that irritates me, because it makes the brand seem insecure. Why should I respect a company that can’t respect itself enough to play it cool ? Every time Top Chef does a porno shot of a kitchenware label or an Ugly Betty character discusses her love of Healthy Choice, I feel like those products are demonstrating their fear that they are not good enough to be noticed on their own. It makes me resent them, the way I might resent a boy texts me six times a day instead of just trusting that I’ll notice his first text and get back to him.

Admittedly, I’m heaping all the blame on advertisers here. Does anyone know what kind of role a show’s creative team has in controlling the placement of a brand?

Anyway… the upshot is that I’ve realized I’ve been too quick to dismiss embedded TV advertising. I haven’t been appreciating the many ways it can function. Both Glee and our conversation have taught me to see gradations in a field I assumed had only one color.